Alla Plachkova1*
1 wine expert (WSET Level 3 Award), co-owner of a family winery “Kolonist”, 01013, Ukraine, Kyiv, Promyslova street 4.
*Corresponding author. E-mail: plachkovaan@gmail.com
1. Introduction
Being a local wine producer for over 14 years in Ukraine, every day we ask many questions about our past, but receive no quick answers. Answers appear visible when we learn the history, examine the maps and find out interesting historical facts.
The territory of Ukrainian Bessarabia, which is in fact the territory between two powerful rivers such as the Dniester River and the Danube River, goes along the Black sea. If you look at the climate map of Ukraine, you will see that Ukrainian Bessarabia is locat-ed in a temperate continental climate with a strong sea influence. Moreover, the Danube Delta which is a so-called “zero” kilome-tre location in the South of Ukraine, where the Danube river flows into the Black sea, creates a fantastic microclimate. This place
is a nature reserve for fish, pelicans, even flamingos, swans, wild boars, horses, and many other fauna representatives. If you go further to the West towards Romania, you will find even more favourable loca-tion for wine growing and winemaking. In a so-called Danubian Bessarabia (a part of Ukrainian Bessarabia which goes along the Danube river) the biggest fresh-water lake in Ukraine named Yalpug with a total area of 149 sq km is located. This lake is officially among the largest lakes in Europe. Now just imagine that you drive about an hour along the lake, which has a huge water surface and has gentle slopes with the vineyards.
I could write a separate article about the lake itself, because this lake is larger than life. It gives everything best to this location, to the flora and fauna and, of course, to the people, who live around the lake. Thanks
to the huge water surface, the valley of the lake creates its own microclimate, which re-sembles the Mediterranean one. But there is a drastic difference and at the same time it is a huge peculiarity of this place, the arti-cle will tell you about it later. This climate is most favourable for growing different grape varieties and for making fine wines.
Moreover, if you look at the Northern hemisphere of the globe, you will find that Danubian Bessarabia, and especially the valley of this lake, is located at the same lat-itude with Piedmont in Italy and Bordeaux in France – 45 parallel, most favourable for production of high quality wines in the Northern hemisphere.
When we see the paradise where the vine-yards of our family winery “Kolonist” grow, when we see the beauty of the nature, the sun-rises and the sunsets that our vines see every day, we always say: “God was gener-ous to us when he granted this land to us”.
2. New Old world
Many wine experts today divide the whole world into 3 peculiar parts: Old World – beloved old mother Europe; New World – the US, Argentina, Australia, Chile, New Zealand, South African Republic (statisti-cally most popular wines today are from the new world, by the way). New New World – China with its boom of wine production and buying all the winemaking equipment from Europe for years ahead, so all the rest of the world is staying in queues to buy French barriques. But, an interesting thing is that China is mostly producing and consuming red wines, even in their hot, wet and sea-food regions. The reason is that a Chinese word “wine” means (by one of the mean-ings) “red alcohol”, that is why Chinese psychologically tend to drinking reds.
But the most interesting news is that some wine experts distinguish one more part – the 4th part of the wine world – New Old World. One of the brightest adherents of this theory is Mr. Allan Karl, a global food
and wine explorer, a writer, an author of the best-selling book “Forks: A quest for cul-ture, cuisine and connection”, award-win-ning photographer, and a world-known American “WorldRider”, who travels the world by motorcycle. He is the first to dis-cover for me a new vision to some parts of the wine globe. New Old World is consid-ered to be the parts of the world, where the wine making had a deep and long-lasting history in the far past, but due or, better to say, because of certain historical events, like wars, changes of rulers and laws, wine-making was lost and forgotten or was very slowly developed. But in course of time, at these regions the art of winemaking is re-vived and the genetic memory of the people and the spirits of the land do their job. We discover now undeservedly forgotten terroir diamonds in the winemaking world. Places where the wine-makers have once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to start all over again, and try not to repeat mistakes of the past.
Among these New Old World regions there are the Balkans (with Albania and former Yugoslavia), Moldova, Romania, the Black sea region, South of Ukraine, including Bassarabia.
3. Danubian Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a region both in Moldova and Ukraine. We used to call a part of Bessarabia in Ukraine – Danubian Bessarabia (along the Danube river).
To prove a winemaking history of this land, we compared an old map of Ancient Greece and a map of the Roman Empire with the map of modern Ukraine (Pic. 1,2).
Picture 1. Ancient Greece colonies and the territory of Ukraine
We found out that Danubian Bessarabia, in-cluding the Yalpug lake valley, was a part of these two powerful historical periods.
Ancient Greece had a huge period of histor-ical existence. But during VII-VI centuries B.C. the Greek colonies flourished in the Mediterranean and the Northern Black sea regions. About 70 Greek colonies were set-tled along the Black sea at those times. Greek trade at that period is becoming worldwide.
Ancient Greece imported slaves, luxury items, raw materials, and food for increas-ing population. Of course, the production of wines was a priority of everyday life.
During the Roman Empire, the Trajan Emperor (98-117 A.D.) set the borders of the Roman Empire and built so-called Trajan walls, which still exist! Every time we drive from Odessa along the Black sea towards the Danube, we go across linear earthen fortifications; they look like long even hills, artificially made. These are ex-actly the borders of the Roman Empire cre-ated by the ruler Trajan Emperor. The ter-ritory of Bessarabia was called Moesia at those times.
We have many archaeological proofs, in particular remnants of ancient ampho-rae from Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, which were found on the banks of the Yalpug lake by archaeologists. At those times wines in amphorae were shipped via the Danube to Europe.
Picture 2. The Roman Empire and the territory of Ukraine
The map and the history prove that Danubian Bessarabia has a long and deep winemaking history. You cannot image Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire without the art of winemaking. So, the wine had been pro-duced here long before the European times.
(But French people don’t like this story).
Later on, after many years of domination of the Ottoman Empire, viticulture and wine-making in this area practically stopped.
The revival began after colonial migrants of different nationalities from many European countries came to these lands for cultivation of land and development of the region af-ter the liberation from the Ottoman Empire.
Viticulture and winemaking became an im-portant area of agricultural development, especially in the second half of the 19th century.
At the time when the vineyards of European countries were suffering from phylloxera, Danubian Bessarabia compensated wines in Europe, which raised wine-growing and winemaking in the region to a very high level. The Institute of Viticulture and Winemaking named after V.E. Tairov, estab-lished in 1910, provided scientific support for development of viticulture and wine-making of high European standards.
During the period prior to World War, Danubian Bessarabia implemented the lat-est technology with ultra-modern equip-ment at that time for winemaking. The best European grape varieties of grapes were
planted. Wines from Danubian Bessarabia were already well known in Western Europe, including the Scandinavian countries.
Anyway, after that time many things changed. During the period of the Soviet Union massive wine production was pre-vailing. In the second half of the 20th cen-tury in Soviet times, viticulture and wine-making experienced a tumultuous stage of development. Modern wine-producing enterprises were built at that time, this sec-tor of the agricultural secsec-tor gave up to 20
% of revenues to the budget and became a source of economic development of the ter-ritory. It should be noted that this industry, for the most part, was developed by indus-trial methods, which were based primarily on high yields and the quantity of products produced. Absence of foreign competition did not favour the quality either.
But still, during the Soviet Union times we find something positive. One of these posi-tive things was in Krynychne village, locat-ed in Danubian Bessarabia. Soviet govern-ment settled a special laboratory for variety testing in this village. The laboratory was fi-nanced by the government and was dealing with testing various grape varieties, grow-ing them in certain climatic conditions and eventually producing wines from them. The country realized a huge winemaking poten-tial of this very territory with unique climatic conditions and rich soils. Unfortunately, the laboratory was closed and destroyed after the Soviet Union collapsed. But the minds and professionals of that work were saved and still work in this region. At the begin-ning of 2000s the Plachkov family founded a winery named “Kolonist”. The head of the Soviet laboratory Mrs. Lidiya Zadnipranaya with an over-40-year-experience is now the head of our winemaking laboratory at our Kolonist winery. She managed to save some bottles from those times as a proof of the laboratory existence in the village (Pic. 3).
Picture 3. Bottles dated back to 1970s-1980s from the Soviet laboratory.
In addition to positive things, in 1957, two technical Ukrainian grape varieties of Odessa Black and Sukholymanskyi white were created by the Ukrainian breed-ers at the Tairov Institute. The breedbreed-ers brought them out by crossing; parents of Odessa Black are Cabernet Sauvignon and Alicante Bouchet (French), and parents of Sukholymanskyi white are Chardonnay and Plavay (Moldova). The wines from these grape varieties were mainly used for blend-ing.
The Kolonist winery was one of the first to launch Odessa Black and Sukholymanske wines on a commercial basis; and the birth of the “Ukrainian wine” brand began from these two grape varieties. In a short period of time, Odessa Black wine has become very popular and has been estimated not only by experts in Ukraine, but also by ex-perts abroad. These wines are recognized as wines of their own character, recognizable and as wines-individuality. Recently, these wines have become the hallmark of Ukraine on the international stage.
4. Colonists come to the lands of Bessarabia. Bulgarians.
More than 200 years ago, many colonists of various nationalities from different countries came to the lands of Ukrainian Bessarabia, rushing from the Ottoman Empire pressure.
Colonists were scattered across the big ter-ritory of Bessarabia, beginning from Odesa city, along the Moldavian and Romanian borders. Bulgarians, in particular, settled in the Yalpug lake valley. Bulgarians, as many other colonists, during the Russian Empire times were granted liberty; they received a free colonial status. The word “kolonist” at those times meant a free person. Every col-onist was dreaming to become a “kolcol-onist”.
It gave them free education, free medicine, no taxes for many years, granted parcels of land. But instead, settlers had to turn an abandoned sunburnt land into a flourishing region.
A characteristic feature of Bessarabia is multi-nationality. Each nationality was try-ing to preserve peculiarities of their culture, traditions, language, and enogastronom-ic heritage. Bulgarians thus settled sever-al villages. One of the biggest villages is Krynychne village, with a population over 4000 people.
Bulgarians brought with them their tradi-tions of viticulture and winemaking, pre-served since the Thracian times. Today, in the Krynychne village, which is one of the strongest Bulgarian communities, since the establishment of the village more than 200 years ago, the production and consumption of wine has been a must in the gastronomic culture of each family. Given that the region has a large shortage of quality drinking wa-ter and high annual air temperatures, wine consumption has played an important role in daily nutrition as well as in preventing dis-eases. Now every Bulgarian in Bessarabia knows how to produce wine. My husband comes from the Bulgarian family. In honour of Bulgarian ancestors our family winery was called “Kolonist”.
It should be noted that culture of wine con-sumption in Ukraine is growing very fast, which increases the demand for quality wines, including the Ukrainian producers.
Luckily, we see an increase of number of producers in the Yalpug Valley and in Ukraine in general.
5. Terroir of Danubian Bessarabia
Danubian Bessarabia is situated in the Black Sea region, on the south of Ukraine in Odesa region, near the Danube Delta.
The most favourable terroir here for grow-ing grapes is microclimate in the Yalpug lake valley. In the valley Krynychne village is located at an altitude of 30 meters above sea level. In addition to its close proximity to the Black Sea, Krynychne has one of its greatest advantages - its immediate location on the shore of Yalpug lake.
Sloping shores of the lake allow the vine-yards to receive an equal amount of sun, and even double sunrays: direct from the sun and reflected ones from the surface of the lake.
One feature of terroir is the aerodynamics of the slopes of the vineyards. There is intense aeration due to winds, which greatly reduc-es the likelihood of grapevine diseasreduc-es. Due to the existence of a large reservoir, the risk of freezing of the vineyards in winter is re-duced, and at low average annual rainfall of 300-400 mm, moist air thanks to the large evaporation area saves the situation.
A distinctive feature of this area is a drastic diurnal temperature fluctuation during rip-ening of the grapes, which allows maintain-ing the required acidity level and Ph durmaintain-ing the accumulation of sugar in the berries.
There are more than 300 sunny days a year in the Yalpug Valley. Soils are loamy with deep limestone deposits.
Due to these climatic conditions, almonds, pomegranates, persimmon, Himalayan Ziziphus jujube, olive trees are grown in the valley of Lake Yalpug, and of course grapes are grown.
No wonder, this place was considered to be unique and most favourable for the cultiva-tion of grapes and the produccultiva-tion of high quality wines at any historical time.
Abstract: The increasing number of abandoned and non-cultivated farmland has become a critical issue for Japanese agriculture in recent years. It is vital for Japanese agriculture, as an economic sector, to preserve and pass on agricultural resources, such as farmland, to future generations. In the meantime, recently, more and more people who are unrelated to the agriculture sector have started private wineries in Japan. This has prompted us to undertake this study to empirically reveal the mechanism by which abandoned and non-cultivated farmland is revived, preserved, and passed on by private wineries newly established by people who do not belong to the Japanese agricultural sector. To clarify the mechanism, we focused on a winemaking area in Toumi region in Shinshu Ueda area, which is famous for a growing number of new private wineries and is now called the wine valley of Chikuma River.
Keywords: wine-tourism, agricultural resources, innovation, custom crush, Japan